Some electric propulsion systems, such as turbo electric distributed propulsion (TeDP) systems found on some aircraft or marine craft, may rely on large and expensive, fault interruption and isolation equipment to interrupt fault currents, and isolate individual branches of the system that carry the fault currents, as a way to prevent the fault currents from damaging the system. Still some electric propulsion systems may include specialized converters that use fold-back control techniques or other techniques to limit fault currents without actually locating and isolating the source of the fault, to one particular branch.
While these types of systems may succeed in preventing fault currents from damaging the overall system, electric propulsion systems employing this protection technique may be unable to trace the source of a fault current down to an individual segment, component, or other specific location, within a particular branch. Accordingly, even if only a small portion of a branch is faulty, some electric propulsion systems will isolate an entire branch to prevent a fault current from damaging the system. Electric propulsion systems employing this technique may strain other branches of the system to compensate for a downed branch, even if at least some of the downed branch remains usable.